The gameplay in Konami and tri-Ace's upcoming Nintendo 3DS RPG Beyond the Labyrinth has been mostly a mystery, but now that the title was demoed over the last weekend, some details are a bit clearer. You'll run into the mysterious girl why eventually guides you through the labyrinth dungeon (seen in all the screenshots) by surprise, early on in the game. We knew that she joins your party, which will also consist of four playable characters. Your goal is to protect her.

The girl attacks with Magic Strike, which is also connected to her HP, which is represented by a percentage on the screen. This increases as she deals damage, so it's important to protect her, and to do so you can choose which character you'd like to absorb an enemy's attack. Your characters will chat amongst themselves in battle, but if you miss anything the conversations are logged. Some parameters like movement points can carry over into your next fight.

You can recover HP at save points (fully) and other certain areas in the dungeon (partially). Beyond the Labyrinth has four difficulties: normal-, super-, ultra- and hyper-hard. (Yes, all of them are considered 'hard.') You can skip event scenes on higher difficulties, though.

Finally, you can customize the mysterious girl's looks, right down to her underwear if you're into that sort of thing. You can import costume designs you've made in Photoshop, or share costumes with other players, though it's not clear whether either of these are done over the 3DS or via computer.

Beyond the Labyrinth releases in Japan next week, on January 19th. There no news yet of an overseas release.